The Plague
by zmkuzma
Summary: After the Plague blankets the Earth, people are forced to make new ways to survive and find meaning in their lives. Story will start off deceptively. If you stick with it, every word becomes essential. Chap 14: The truth. Next Update: August 25
1. Great Gray Fortress

Leslie Moira was born in Cleveland, Ohio on July 14, 2000. Her mother was in labor for fourteen hours and refused to use any type of drug to help facilitate the birthing process. During those 14 fourteen hours she juggled bawling, screaming, and violently choking her husband, while yelling throughout the room, "You did this to me! It was you! You and me are gonna share this pain, _Honey_!" Despite the numerous physical and verbal attacks that he underwent, Leslie's father stayed there that entire time doing his best to maintain a calm atmosphere. In response to her shouting, for example, he said, "That's right, dear. Let it out. Doctor, I suggest you step back, she's actually being quite gentle with me. If she gets a hold of you there's no telling what might happen."

When Leslie left the womb, everything went dead silent except for the low hums and beeps of the medical equipment splayed about the room. This perplexed the doctors slightly because it was considered a normal and healthy response for a newborn baby to cry once they entered into the world. In Leslie's case the newfound variety of information that each of her newfound senses provided her did not scare her or shock her in slightest. It was as if she already had a clue about what to expect from the universe. In just a few seconds, she was in her mother's arms fast asleep.

When the doctors told Leslie's parents that it was somewhat odd for a newborn not to cry immediately after birth, her mother replied, "I did enough screaming for the both of us."

Leslie's father looked at his child in the arms of the woman he loved, and it dawned upon him that this would be the single greatest moment of his entire life. He held out his pinky and almost as if they had planned it together, Leslie's little fist reached up in a little yawn and her little hand stretched out and wrapped around his finger with the softest little touch he had ever felt. He looked at Leslie's face and said to his wife, "This child is going to grow to be very strong." It was at that moment when Leslie's mother spoke her name to her for the first time.

Coincidentally or not, Leslie, in some language from some time, can be translated to mean, "gray fortress." Even more interesting, is that the last name of this family, Moira, can be translated to mean, "the great." If you don't get what's being hinted at here, her name, in sum, can be translated to mean, "the great gray fortress."


	2. Strands of Chicago

Leslie lived up to her name. As she grew older it became apparent that she was not an ordinary girl. Contrary to the popular notions of her time in which women were weak, emotional, and dependent on masculinity, she was stolid, calculating, and self reliant.

Shortly after her birth, the family moved into the inner city of Chicago. It was in Chicago where she took her first steps and spoke her first words.

Her very first word, in fact, came when she was on a playground making her way around to each piece of equipment while being watched by her father. She observed two older children jump onto a set of monkey bars, and when she tried to emulate their actions, she fell and deeply skinned both of her knees on asphalt. Her father quickly ran up to her after gasping at the sight in sheer horror. To his surprise, she got up quickly, looked at both of her bleeding legs, looked up to her father, and said, "Ouch." He almost laughed, but he restrained himself because he didn't want to make it seem like he was laughing at her injury. He made a note to himself, though, as he picked her up and carried her home: she didn't cry at all. In fact, if he didn't know any better, it seemed like she thought it was a little funny herself. On their way back, he tried to get her to say, "Daddy." Right before they got to the step of their home she said, "Horse." Leslie's father looked at her very confused, and then he realized that he had just given her a ride.

"I guess I am, " he said smiling down at his daughter.

That smile wouldn't last long because his wife blasted him once she saw Leslie's knees.

When Leslie was thirteen years old, financial pressures were making it clear that the family would have to move. Leslie's mother had found a job in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it seemed like the only option was to take it. The entire family was very fond of Chicago, and leaving it was proving to be a hard decision to make. Leslie had grown fond of it as well. Not only was it the place where she had taken her first steps and spoken her first words, it was the place where she grew wiser meeting new types of people and experiencing new things.

Very recently, as she was walking through a city park during some free time, she discovered a group of people playing chess. It was the first time she had seen the game, and she loved how wonderfully complex and simple it was at the same time. Different pieces interacted with each other working to achieve a common goal. No game was the same even though the same pieces and the same squares on the same board were always present. She began to play on her own using the Internet. After a few days, her father noticed and challenged her to a game. They hadn't exchanged more than a few moves before her father realized that he was completely out of his league.

"When did you start playing, again?" he asked the great gray fortress.

"About a week ago," she replied, moving her rook. The rook, coincidentally or not, was her favorite piece.

"Wow. How did you get so good so fast?" he wondered.

"I'm not that good, Dad, but I'm getting better. All you have to do is see the colors," Leslie said matter-of-factly.

"The colors?" he said confused.

"Yeah. Look at how they're swirling together." She pointed at the board with some enthusiasm.

"I guess…" He was completely lost. Leslie definitely saw something that he didn't see, or maybe it was just because she was so damn calculating.

"Checkmate," Leslie said.

Her father surveyed the board. "I hope you know that I let you win," he joked.

She smiled as she reset the pieces. It was little harder to beat him the second time.


	3. Pittsburgh

Late one night, as her family was in the middle of its decision to move from Chicago, Leslie walked in on her mother sitting at a desk staring off into a wall pensively. When her mother heard Leslie, she sat up and said "Leslie" very softly.

"Mom," Leslie began, "I know this is a tough decision to make. We have family here and friends here. Also, this is the place where I grew up. We all love it a lot. You shouldn't be afraid of leaving, though. We're not going to suddenly forget everyone here in Chicago, and it's not like we won't have plenty of friends and memories anywhere else we go. I'm just saying that we can handle it. Whatever happens we can handle it."

Her mother almost cried when she finished. She gave Leslie a hug and told her "Thanks." Leslie turned to leave and go to bed.

"You know your father was right about you," Leslie's mother said.

"What? What did Dad say?" she turned back to her mother curious.

"He said that you would grow up to be strong," Leslie's mother said smiling.

"Well, I don't know," she said thinking, "There's still a lot I have to learn. But right now I would say that I'm at least stronger than Dad at chess. He stinks," Leslie said laughing.

Her mother chuckled as well.

One day later, the family decided to move. They packed all of their bags and said goodbye to Chicago. Leslie had made a lot of friends there. Each of them promised to keep in touch.

In Pittsburgh, Leslie attended her first day of high school. The school was huge, educating over 1200 students. During her first year, Leslie looked around at the dynamics of her situation. She saw a backwards world where popular students won class elections over intelligent students, and where the more flesh that a girl showed in the halls meant the more attention she garnered. This world was different for Leslie for two separate factors. First, her middle school was quite small, so people didn't need to clamber for attention the way they did in this highly populated environment. And second, the people in high school just seemed to be fake compared to the people she had known beforehand. Everyone had a reputation that they needed to uphold, defend, or fight against. She disliked it, but, being the great gray fortress that she was, she didn't let it bother her or change her. She stayed focused on what she thought she should focus on rather than letting other people decide that for her.

When her school posted the class rankings for the first time more and more eyes began to turn her way and more and more voices started to ask her for help. Here, someone who was invisible for about 2 months of high school suddenly stuck out like a mountain simply because she was number one in the class.

At first, Leslie had to learn how to deal with the constant begs for tutoring and the people who would praise her to her face and point and laugh behind her back. In one such case, Leslie was eating by herself at a table during a free lunch period when a girl she had politely refused to tutor purposely dropped an entire tray of food right onto Leslie's head. The entire cafeteria roared with laughter, but Leslie coolly and calmly stood up, looked at her food and drink soaked clothes, looked at the girl, whose name was Harmony, and said, "Ouch." Leslie walked out of the cafeteria that moment leaving Harmony with a perplexed look on her face as the rest of the student body continued to holler at the hilarity of everything.


	4. Free Man From the High Hill

Leslie spent the rest of the day in those same clothes because she didn't have a change, and she didn't want to miss an English class discussion about a play called Krapp's Last Tape. It was a long day, but by the end she felt more intelligent because she had learned that most people only value others because of their potential worth. With time, she became adjusted to her situation and she handled it with a silent grace. When the rankings came out again, and Leslie was still number one, fewer people asked her for tutoring and more comments and congratulations were sincere. They were coming to realize that this girl was no fluke. She was the real deal.

And still, there were those who hated her for it. The dynamics of her high school world had truly not changed a single fraction.

On the same day that Harmony poured all of her food onto Leslie's head, a boy named Kermit Kinnard born on February 29, 2000 was sitting in the cafeteria as well. The year 2000, as you might assume, was a leap year. Each year, in the absence of February 29th Kermit and his mother would celebrate his birthday on March 1st. Note that Kermit's father was never at these celebrations. The explanation for his absence is that he died in a car accident about six months after Kermit's birth.

Whenever Kermit was asked by random strangers about his age, he would reply, "I'm the oldest four year old that you'll ever meet."

When Leslie stood up and left the cafeteria, he noticed that she dropped her wallet onto the floor. When things calmed down a little, he walked over and quickly stuffed it into his bag after picking it up.

"Whatchu get over there?" a friend of his asked when he got back to his seat.

"Don't worry about it," he said waving his hand in the air.

His friend looked at him carefully for a moment as he chewed a sandwich from a brown paper bag. His gaze then suddenly drifted away and he shrugged.

"Whatever," he said nonchalantly.

Shortly after, Kermit cleaned his tray and left the cafeteria.

Now, because of his name, Kermit was made fun of quite a bit as a young child. Even now in high school a few of his closest friends would jokingly call him "froggy" to get him really pissed off. The constant teasing from when he was young made him withdraw away from people in social situations. He was what you would call, "shy." He avoided parties and hung out with only a few close friends. Even so, he was a likable human being. Despite the way he generally avoided socialization, he made friends very easy.

When he first came to high school, he was already armed with the knowledge of how people could be cruel and how they could abandon their sense of right and wrong just to be liked. The fact that he could pull such a huge conclusion just from experiencing some name teasing as a young child speaks to his powers of extrapolation and deduction. In a way, this knowledge made him free from the abuse of high school because he knew how to inhibit it and how to avoid it.

Coincidentally or not, Kermit, in some language from some time can be translated to mean, "a free man." Even more interesting is the fact that the last name of his family, Kinnard, can be translated to mean, "from the high hill." If you don't get what's being hinted at here, his name, in sum, can be translated to mean, "a free man from the high hill."

As Leslie was walking home, her clothes became sticky and covered with grime because the food and drinks from the lunch that was dropped on her head had now dried into a fine paste. She thought about taking a shower and sleeping for little while when she heard someone call behind her.

"Hey! Wait!"

She turned her head and stopped to see Kermit Kinnard running up to her. When he caught up, he stopped a second to catch his breath leaning down onto his knees.

"Sorry to bother you," he said, "I just wanted to get this back to you." He held out her wallet as he stood back up right.

Leslie felt around in her pockets for a second and after confirming that there was indeed a missing object she reached out to take the wallet.

"Thanks a lot," she said, "I might be needing this," she joked.

"This is very true," Kermit replied jokingly as well. "Take it easy," he said waving and walking back in the direction from which he came.

"You too." Leslie said waving back.

They might not have known it right then, but they had just become friends.

There is one more interesting thing of note about Kermit Kinnard. Because he shied away from the other kids so much after he found out that they would constantly make fun of him, Kermit grew an active imagination in order to entertain himself. When he was about four years old, his teachers and his mother noticed that he had developed an imaginary friend named Jansen. Jansen was a young man around 19 years old that Kermit looked up to like an older brother. Jansen played a very big role in Kermit's life in that he provided Kermit with a male role model that he did not have in the absence of his father.

Jansen knew a lot about the universe because he traveled all of the time. Jansen could walk from star to star, swim through the Milky Way, or hitchhike on space dust floating to other galaxies. Jansen told Kermit stories of worlds and morals that no one on earth had ever dreamed of before. Kermit would sit and listen to Jansen for hours and hours at a time.

As Kermit got older, his mother started to get worried and asked his teachers for advice. Kermit was growing out of the age where it was deemed acceptable to have an imaginary friend. Soon, Kermit was in psychological counseling forced to describe his conversations with Jansen to someone with the title of doctor whom he had never seen before. This process continued until Kermit got smart and recognized the flaws of psychology and psychiatry. Instead of telling the doctor about Jansen, he just said that Jansen had left. After that the sessions stopped, and Kermit went about a normal life with no more follow-ups and no more questions. It was a simple answer to what everyone except for Kermit called a problem.

"I'm not insane. I know what I see. And it's not like I'm hurting anyone, or I'm being distracted from my normal routines," Kermit said a little frustrated. He was in his room late at night after the last of his psychiatry sessions.

"Everyone cares about you, Kermit. That's all," Jansen replied calmly.

"You're right," Kermit said flopping onto his bed, "but it's still really annoying to have someone tell you that you're unhealthy when you feel completely otherwise. It's almost the same as someone calling you a liar when you know that you're telling the truth."

"That makes sense. I think I know how you feel. It reminds me of the time when I..."

As you can see, those conversations continued.


	5. Friends

Kermit Kinnard walked into the cafeteria with a full tray of food only to realize that it wasn't a place where he wanted to be. It was loud, busy, and there were very few seats that he could spot from where he stood. He made the decision at that moment to leave and eat outside on a different part of the school's campus. On his way out, he ran into two of his friends headed in the same direction as himself.

Kermit squinted as the sun hit his eyes. The sky showed a deep blue with no clouds in sight, and the wind on the grounds was weak yet refreshing and cool. Scattered around the campus, several groups of students were sitting together laughing and eating their lunches. It wasn't long before Kermit picked out two people sitting under the shade of a small tree. One of the girls he didn't know too well. His mind tried to place her somewhere, but he couldn't think of anything. The other girl, sitting at the base of the tree resting her back on the bark, was Leslie Moira.

It was about a week after Kermit had first met Leslie. He was feeling socially adventurous for a change, so he walked over and stood in front of the two girls. His friends soon followed along.

"Hey, mind if we sit hear?" Kermit asked politely.

"We wont stop you," the other girl said as Leslie started sipping a container of juice.

Leslie's eyes passed over each of the four boys very briefly as they sat. One of the guys noticed and shuttered at her glance.

"You're scary," he said to her very deliberately.

"Gus, you're an idiot," the other girl said.

"Shut up, Aisa," he said back.

Aisa Fryman was born on January 22, 2000 in Chicago, Illinois. Aisa, coincidentally or not, also spoke her first words and took her first steps in the city of Chicago. When she was two years old, her family moved to a suburb of Pittsburgh because there were several relatives nearby who could help raise Aisa while her parents worked. In Pittsburgh, Aisa went from this home to that under the care of multiple members of her extended family. Because of the constant motion, Aisa did not have an established routine, which made it easy for her to adapt to different events and situations. At the same time, that motion made her somewhat restless. She loved adventure wanted everything in life to have some kind of theme or lesson. Often times, in her search for adventure, she would walk for hours on end in a random direction, taking everything she saw as precious. If she didn't have to eat, sleep, or worry about her social ties, she would walk the earth for all eternity. Walking was her thing. She walked.

Aisa and Gus knew each other quite well from photography class. At the beginning of the year, they were assigned together for their group work, and on several occasions they had to meet outside of school because certain assignments required extra time commitment. In a strange kind of way they were friends. Strange is the most adept word in this situation because whenever they got within proximity of each other they would start bickering. Sometimes it was comical and sometimes it was vicious. Whenever Aisa reached her tolerance for their arguments, she would say, "My life is going to be so much easier after this is over."

By the word "this," she meant her relationship with Gus.

They didn't really speak much outside of class, so it was a bit of a surprise for his friends when they realized that Gus knew her name.

"You know her, Gus?" the last of the guys said to him. Then he turned toward the two girls, smiled, and waved saying, "I don't think we've met, by the way. I'm Ijames."

"Yea, she's my godforsaken partner in my godforsaken photography class," he said sticking his tongue out at Aisa before taking a bite of a sandwich.

Gus Little was born on October 17, 1999 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He registered for the photography class hoping it would alleviate him of a severe problem. Every hour of every day, exactly four new ideas came into his head for some kind of fictional narrative. Four ideas is no exaggeration. He could literally tell the hour based on the total number of ideas he had come up with during the day. For that reason, he never needed a watch, and looking at clocks was more for the novelty of looking at a clock than it was to tell the time.

Gus never forgot his stories because they always resurfaced to his mind in the form of dreams. Ideas were constantly floating around in his head at a rate that he couldn't help. The problem was that he had no way to get them out. He struggled with writing, and his drawing was terrible. He was always in search of some medium to show the images and characters inside of his head whether it was through novel, comic book, painting, screen writing, or cinema, but nothing ever worked.

Photography, he thought, might be an answer to his woes. So far, however, it did nothing but give him more damn ideas. Ideas weren't a bad thing. It was just that it was almost torture to be unable to express something for which he cared so much about. Gus was starting to hate photography more and more, so his patience with the class was becoming visibly thin.

This, in part, was one of the reasons why he argued so much with Aisa. He didn't like the class, so he took it out on her. Aisa wasn't exactly one to just take that abuse, though. She fought back and made Gus feel pretty belittled at times, but only when he deserved it.

Aisa massaged her temples lightly before sighing.

"My life is going to be so much easier after this is over," she said. She shook her head suddenly after that. "Anyway… it's nice to meet you, Ijames." She looked over to Kermit.

"You walked over here first, but you're the quietest one here… except for Leslie, I guess," she said throwing a fist at Leslie's shoulder, "What's your name?"

"Oh, I'm Kermit. It nice to meet you, Aisa," Kermit spat out ungracefully.

Leslie watched the entire exchange with unblinking eyes never removing the juice bottle from her lips. She lowered the bottle and smacked her lips.

"Good times," she said.


	6. Strength

Leslie first met Aisa shortly after the school year began. They were in the same math class, and Aisa's seat was directly next to Leslie's. Aisa kind of sensed that Leslie was new to Pittsburgh, so, being the extroverted person that she was, she introduced herself and they quickly became friends. When the class rankings were posted for the first time, Aisa was completely surprised. She could tell that Leslie was sharp from her conversations with her, but she didn't expect something like that. She quickly reevaluated her perspective of her friend and took careful note of Leslie's actions during school to discover where that number one rank came from. Leslie quickly noticed her change in behavior and confronted her about it.

"Aisa, nothing has changed," Leslie said, "the numbers don't mean anything. It's me."

Aisa laughed. "Why do you have to be so smart? You're making me look bad," she joked.

"You're too cool for me to make you look bad, Aisa," Leslie said smiling back.

Still, as much as she didn't want to admit it, a part of her felt exactly the same way as Gus when she looked at her friend: fear. Leslie wasn't exactly intimidating or overtly frightening, but her strength had a strange way of leaking out through her eyes from time to time. When Aisa was caught in her gaze during those moments, she felt that strength seize her and invade her senses. Because the feeling was so strange and so powerful, it translated into fear. As if a cube of ice were trailing down her spine, those moments made her quiver.

She wasn't alone. Aside from Gus, there had been several instances in Leslie's life when people were literally stung by her countenance. One such instance came when Leslie was in the middle of her second year of high school. Leslie had just taken a standardized test that was administered all over the nation called the SAT-I. "S" stood for standard, "A" stood for aptitude, "T" stood for test, and "I" stood for one.

The SAT-I was administered all over the United States as a gauge to judge a student's basic reasoning abilities on a 2400 total point scale for admittance to college and other next-level educational facilities. The test could be taken multiple times, and the only score that mattered during a person's test taking history was the highest score. It was important in that it determined whether or not an individual could add, subtract, read, comprehend, and write with enough proficiency to survive in a high-level learning environment. It was unimportant in that it was standardized. The SAT-I could not produce a number or grade for a person's creativity, commonsense, ingenuity, or individuality.

Normally, a student would take the test in their third or fourth year of high school right before they were about to graduate, but Leslie's parents wanted her to get some experience with the SAT-I before anyone put any pressure on her about it. Her parents were right in their intention to prepare her for her future, but they were wrong in assuming that the test would have be a part of it ever again. About a month or so after she took the SAT-I, Leslie received her score from the official College Board of Education. The College Board was the organization in charge of administering the test and distributing a student's scores across the nation to select colleges.

When she cracked the seal on the mail that contained the test results, she already knew what it would say. She knew it the moment she left the testing room. Leslie had achieved a perfect score. All 2400 official points sat on the official piece of paper officially staring obnoxiously at the universe.

When her dad saw it, he lightly flicked Leslie on the head and said, "I will never mention this examination ever again."

"That's that," Leslie replied.

While the test itself may be a curious event on its own, what is actually relevant is the reaction that it garnered. Shortly afterward, when the score got was passed from one official hand to another, someone somewhere looked a bit more closely at Leslie's academic record and hypothesized that her intelligence was one that rivaled all others of her age group in the United States. This person happened to be in charge of an elite preparatory boarding school in Europe, and he made arrangements with Leslie's high school to meet her in person. He instructed the school not to give any warning to Leslie beforehand that he would be there.

This person's name was Uvrith Ashk. Uvrith Ashk graduated from a renowned school called Oxford and obtained a legal degree from another renowned school called Harvard. In fact, everything about this man was renowned in some way or some form. He was a renowned individual, and he liked it that way. Coincidentally or not, he was on an important business visit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when he caught wind of Leslie's name and her records, so he decided that it wouldn't hurt to interview a potential student and possibly add to the renowned student body of his renowned prep school.

"Pencil this in, Molly. Tuesday, at nine in the mourning, we're going to visit a local high school to interview a prep student for scholarship," Uvrith stated hanging up a phone that was just connected to Leslie's school.

"Yes, sir, but… really? Normally, the scholarship program is so long and hard to initiate. This just seems like it's on a whim," Uvrith's personal secretary, Molly, said.

"I know that... I know that. I just have an interesting feeling about this one," Uvrith replied.

Molly looked at Uvrith, scrunched her eyebrows, and blinked twice before scribbling the note into a calendar book.

On Tuesday, Leslie was called into the principal's office at 8:58am. When she arrived, she squinted at the sun coming in through the windows. A woman sitting in a chair across from the principal stood up and introduced herself as Molly. Molly asked the principal if she could have about thirty minutes alone with Leslie. The principal granted the request, and Molly quickly engaged Leslie in a light conversation. Every so often, Molly would scribble something down in a notebook as Leslie was speaking. At the end of thirty minutes, the principal and Uvrith walked into the room.

"Hello, Leslie. My name is Uvrith Ashk. How are you today?"

"I'm good, thank you. I'm little confused why I've been here in the principal's office for so long, but I can already tell that this isn't an average visit. I bet it has something to do with the test scores," Leslie reasoned.

"Yes and no," Uvrith began impressed with her deductions, "The SAT-I made us aware of a person named Leslie Moira, but I came because I had a feeling about you. You see… Molly here is my assistant, and the conversation that you just undertook is actually a carefully constructed IQ and personality test that we administer on all applicants to our school. I'm the headmaster of an elite boarding school in Europe, and we came to test you to see if you could get in. My school offers one of the best prep educations available to people your age. We have first-rate materials and faculty. Every tool available is placed within our student's grasp."

"This is really a great opportunity for you, Leslie," the principle stepped in, "Mr. Ashk's school is very well renowned."

Leslie leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes in thought. She could feel the warmth of the sun pouring in through the window.

"Sir, I think you should take a look at this," Molly said referring to the notebook in which she was scribbling during her conversation with Leslie, "It doesn't make any sense."

Uvrith walked over to look at the notebook. He picked it up and read it over several times. Molly was right. It didn't make any sense. According to Molly's notes, Leslie had scored perfect on the IQ test. That was just impossible. It must have been a mistake. Uvrith closed the book, and looked at Leslie.

"Don't worry about it," he said to Molly.

"What's wrong?" the principal asked.

"Nothing," uvrith said walking over next to Leslie and kneeling down next to her. His frame blocked the sunlight and cast a friendly cool shadow on Leslie's face.

"Leslie, did you know that it was an IQ test?"

She waited a moment and then opened her eyes. "That test set up a group of guidelines that dictated what traits of personality and intelligence are correct and incorrect. I decided to respond to everything correctly just so I could see what kind of a reaction I would get. I don't agree with anything in that test, though. If I can make my answers perfect the way I just did, I hope you can see that it's flawed. No answer should be perfect, and people can't be divided into genius, average, and dumb. The way I see it, every test result should be as different as every person who takes the test."

A silence fell upon the room so empty that the smallest gear of a clock on the principal's office wall could be heard clicking seconds one sixtieth of their way on to a minute. Just so you know, the clock was slow.

Uvrith open and closed his mouth with wide eyes before saying, "We would like to offer you a place at our school. Scholarship, travel fees and living expenses will be taken care of. All you have to do is say that you want to go, and the wheels will be put into motion."

"I don't know—"

"What do you want?!" Uvrith cut Leslie off frantically, "Just ask and we'll get it for you! Whatever you need, and wherever you want to grow! Tell me what you want, Leslie, and I will do everything in my power to get it for you."

It is important to note that this was not the first time Leslie was asked this question. It was the goal of many others before and after Uvrith Ashk to figure out what exactly she wanted. Better yet, many others before and after Uvrith Ashk would fail to do so. Her parents would ask her what she wanted for her birthday. Her friends would ask her what she wanted to do during the weekend. Guys who wanted to ask her out wondered what she wanted in a boyfriend or if she even wanted a boyfriend at all. Teachers wondered what she wanted to for a career and what goals she wanted to accomplish. No matter what, each of these individuals ran into the same obstacles when they asked those questions. Where they expected some kind of an answer, they were instead given nothing.

Leslie looked into Uvrith's eyes at that moment. Right then and there, her strength seeped through Urvrith's retina and burned his soul. He was so afraid that he couldn't move. He nearly pissed his pants.

"I want you to move about a foot to the left, Mr. Ashk," she said, "The sun is just too nice today to sit in the shade."

An instant or two passed by and Uvrith suddenly broke from petrifaction. He stood and quickly left the room without speaking. Molly followed with a confused look on her face. The principal stood looking at Leslie with an open jaw unable to grasp anything that had happened.

"Is it okay if I go back to class now?" Leslie said politely as she looked at the clock.

"Sure," said the principal unable to conjure anything else to say, "that clock is a little slow too, so you should hurry."

With that, she left the office.

When Molly and Uvrith had left the school building, Uvrith stopped to catch his breath. "Molly, write down that girl's name and keep a close eye on her for me. When she applies to college I want to send letters of recommendation for her to whichever schools she chooses," he said taking deep breaths.

Molly was shocked.

"But she just disrespected you right to your face! Why would you do something like that for her?! There are plenty of more deserving students!" she said frustrated.

"Calm down, Molly," Uvrith said as he began walking again, "you don't know what I know in this situation. That was the single most incredible person you or I will ever meet in our entire lives."

"What?!" Molly raged on, "You practically said you would grant her a wish, and she told you to move aside for some sunlight!"

"Exactly," Uvrith said definitively. Molly suddenly stopped and stared at Uvrith carefully. "She could've asked for a stipend, her own personal lab, her own classrooms, any book she could ever want in the world, but she asked for the one thing that no one can give her. She asked for the Sun… the Sun! We can't do anything for that girl. She has to make her own way. I wish her luck!"

Uvrith rashly threw his hands into the air and said, "She asked for the damn Sun, and until now I would've thought that no one could touch it. After that encounter, I'm just not sure…"

Molly sighed.

"You're always like this," Molly said, "You're putting too much thought into it. You're just thinking too much."

Now, those of you who see symbols and metaphors in everything are probably doing back flips right now. Keep in mind, however, that this is not the only way to see. You should take Leslie's words in any way you want. You can take her literally and reason that the sunlight was quite warm and comfortable as she sat in the principal's office with Mr. Ashk, or you can take her words to mean that she had aspirations whose size and luminosity matched those of the Sun. There are probably other ways to look at those words as well. The point is this: there is more than one way to see.

Getting back on track, Mr. Uvrith Ashk left Pittsburgh that day with his mind lingering on the girl who wanted the Sun. He would wonder about Leslie for the rest of his life. He would wonder where she was, what she was doing, and whether or not she had obtained what she wanted. His ears and his eyes were always open looking for a sign. It was impossible to tell when her legend would come and change the world. When it did, he wanted to be the first one to know.


	7. It

The last person sitting in that group with Gus Little, Leslie Moira, Aisa Fryman, and Kermit Kinnard was born on November 16, 1999 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His name was Ijames Noa, and it didn't take long for Leslie to notice a pattern in his actions that did not manifest when he first introduced himself.

Every once and a while in between the eating, conversation, and laughter at Gus and Aisa's random outbursts at each other, Ijames would scratch the crook of his right arm at the elbow. When he was asked a question by anyone from the group, his scratching would increase in frequency and would then die down again after he had answered.

"Well… Leslie may be really smart, but I bet she doesn't have as good a memory as Ijames does. This guy is like a steel trap," Gus boasted at Aisa.

"Really…" Aisa said feigning interest, "is that fact?"

"You're damn right it is!" Gus said angry at her attitude, "Tell them, Ijames!"

"Well…" he scratched, "it's nothing really. I've always had a pretty good memory," he scratched again, "Things just stick in my head really easily," he finished by scratching yet again.

"You're being modest," Gus said taking another sandwich from his lunch, "You don't even study and you do fine on tests and everything."

"I study!" Ijames snapped.

Gus looked at him with a raised eyebrow and an expression that said the following: be honest.

Ijames scratched once more. "… a little bit," he added, and everyone laughed.

They all continued to eat and talk and enjoy the afternoon when a girl suddenly walked up and snapped a picture of them all.

"What the hell are you doing, Mary?" Gus spat through his sandwich.

"I just got this great new camera! I've been using it all day. It's awesome!" Mary said enthusiastically.

"Well, go take your pictures somewhere else if you don't mind… this isn't a damn red carpet," Gus said shaking a fist.

Mary stuck out her tongue. "You're just mad that I took a picture of you with food hanging out of your mouth."

Aisa started laughing obnoxiously at Gus as everyone else giggled. Gus tried to get to his feet as fast as he could, but he slipped much to Aisa's amusement. Mary took off running and Gus followed.

"Gimme that damn camera!" he yelled disappearing into the school after Mary.

"I guess lunch is over," Leslie said still smiling.

"This was fun," Kermit chuckled.

"Yep," Ijames said and Leslie watched him scratch his arm a final time before the lunch bell sounded.

Leslie's observation was not an isolated incidence. Ijames scratched his arm whenever he was in a situation where he needed to provide an answer or whenever he was under any type of stress. He could stop if he thought about it, but over the years it had become an unconscious habit that was easier to deal with through acceptance rather than resistance.

Just recently, Ijames was taking a History test where a teacher named Ms. Jaden thought he was suspicious because of his scratching. Ms. Jaden wanted to make sure that none of her students were cheating, so she carefully watched Ijames as he completed the test. By the end, Ms. Jaden concluded that Ijames had done nothing of the sort, but she got confused when she noticed that his answers read almost exactly like the The Western World. The Western World was the name of the textbook that the class was using.

"This is uncanny," she said to herself, "I made them put all of their things outside the class during the test, so there's no way he could have used the textbook… I guess he knows the material really well…" Ms. Jaden thought back to Ijames' scratching. "Maybe he was just really itchy," she shrugged and gave him a 95 score.

Ijames' answers did, in fact, read exactly like the textbook on that test. Gus made no exaggeration when he said that Ijames had a good memory. In truth, Ijames could remember anything provided that he laid his eyes upon it, heard it, smelled it, or touched it at least one time in his life. He did not study because he did not have to after he took the labor of looking through the material given to him at least one time.

Said in other words, Ijames Noa's brain was taking high quality snapshots of every piece of information his senses gathered. After each snapshot was manufactured, his brain filed it away into some vault that was secure yet highly organized and easily accessible to the owner. The thing about Ijames was that he had no idea that any of this was going on within his skull. As far as he knew, he just had a good memory.

In Ijames' last year of high school, he developed an independent project that centered on the creation of a time capsule that would be buried and opened at some point in the future. His project raised several eyebrows among the faculty because it seemed like it came out of nowhere. Ijames, however, liked to test new things and push them in random different directions every once and a while, so, roughly, it fit his persona quite well.

Coincidentally or not, the name Ijames did not exist in many languages at all, and where it did exist it was just a name with an unknown or sentimental meaning. Even more interesting, is that the last name of his family, Noa, can be translated in some language from some time to mean, "motion." If you don't get what's being hinted at here, his name, in sum, can be translated to mean, "unknown motion."

In time, ironically, the administration approved the time capsule idea, and Ijames soon found himself wondering around asking for volunteers to help. By then, Leslie, Gus, Aisa, and Kermit had all grown to be lifelong friends to Ijames, so once he found that the rest of the student body was disinterested with his idea, he came to these four for aid. It was a good idea to bring them all together anyway seeing as how high school was almost over and they would soon be parting ways for college.

They all met during a sunny afternoon in a relatively secluded place and dug a deep hole into the ground that was six feet deep and five feet in diameter. Ijames removed a metal rectangle shaped box from a large bag he had set down earlier. He opened it and lined the inside with plastic.

He scratched. "I hope you all brought something to put inside."

"Absolutely," Aisa said searching the ground for her backpack.

"Well, I'll go first while you look. This is what I brought…" Gus said walking up to Ijames and handing him two objects closed inside of two separate plastic bags. One contained a stack of papers lined with very small print, and the other contained a picture enclosed within a frame.

"That stack of papers is every story that I ever thought of summarized down as short as they could possibly get. I could never tell them well, so maybe someone else will." Interestingly enough, Gus came up with yet another story immediately after he said that. He sighed before he continued, "The second thing I have there is something that you'll probably recognize."

Ijames looked at the picture. It was a photograph taken almost four years ago when they all first met each other.

"I remember this day perfectly. We all met pretty randomly just because we didn't want to eat in the cafeteria," Ijames laughed as Aisa and Leslie peered at the picture over his shoulder. "This is good, Gus," Ijames continued setting the objects into the case, "It's better than me at least. I just brought a couple of my favorite comic books and a few cans of my favorite soda. Reading comics and drinking soda… I figure that I might be able to share one of my leisure moments with the people of the future."

He removed both items from his bag, put them in plastic and shoved them into the metal box with Gus' two things.

"Here you go," Aisa handed Ijames a framed black and white photograph she had taken of a small tree, "On the back I wrote down its address and its latitude and longitude. I wonder what it will look like in two hundred years… I saw it one time while I was on a walk, and I took a picture of it for no good reason. I figure that I can put it in the time capsule so that other people will see what we see right now."

"Cool," Ijames said scratching. He took another plastic bag and placed the photo inside. He set it down with the other things inside of the metal box.

Kermit's object was already covered in plastic and he set it down into the case on his own.

"It's a letter to a friend of mine…" Kermit said, "I know it'll be hard to find if we put it inside of the capsule, but I don't doubt that he will come across it eventually."

Ijames eyed Kermit carefully. "Are you sure? I mean, if it's supposed to be for someone why don't you just give it to him… or her? Odds are that they won't get it in time."

"Well… I can't contact him right now," Kermit said, "but you don't need to worry. He'll get it."

Ijames scratched, "Okay. It's your choice," he said.

Leslie walked up to Ijames last and handed him a small thick black notebook surrounded by an oversized sandwich bag. Leslie didn't say anything at first, and everyone's eyes watched her mouth in anticipation.

Now, Leslie saw something at that moment that no one else could see. In a way, she transcended herself and saw through the world. She looked to the past and unconsciously saw her birth. She looked to the future and unconsciously saw the Plague. At the end of her journey, she crashed back into her shoes and found herself surrounded by a group of close friends. She felt that there was only one thing she could say at that zenith, and this is what she said:

"This is it."

Not long after, they left that spot behind and their possessions buried beneath ground. They all walked away smiling at each other talking about the moments they had shared during high school. No one knew what things that the future would bring, but they didn't have to be afraid. This was the moment where they could look toward the things that would be and remain strong in the face of the unknown journey. This was it.


	8. Search for the Wise

Before everything moves forward, it is necessary at this point to take a small step back. As you may or may not have guessed, the letter that Kermit Kinnard placed into Ijames Noa's time capsule was for none other than Jansen. Now, there are a few things about this letter that are worth mentioning.

For one thing, Kermit never wrote letters to Jansen. He had written letters to his grandparents in Lisbon, Ohio, and he had written emails over the Internet as a way to catch up with friends that had moved away from Pittsburgh. Still, none of those letters or emails were addressed to Jansen.

Part of the reason he did not do so was because he was afraid of going back to the psychiatrist. Writing such letters could potentially create a paper trail that, if discovered, would lead Kermit's family to suspect that he still conversed with Jansen from time to time. Such a discovery would land him right back in a head doctor's office again, and as far as Kermit was concerned, he was never going speak with a psychiatrist or a psychologist ever again. Ironically, he was sick of hearing that he was sick. Kermit knew for a fact that he was perfectly fine. He knew that Jansen was real, and that was enough.

Another reason Kermit did not write to Jansen was because there was really no point. The only person that Jansen ever spoke to on the face of the earth was Kermit, and whenever Jansen got back from one of his adventures, he would see Kermit immediately to tell the story.

All in all, Kermit Kinnard's letter was an anomaly.

The most important fact about this letter, however, has less to do with the letter itself than it has to do with the factors that led to its conception. The night before the time capsule was buried into the ground, Kermit was methodically searching through his belongings for an object that said what he wanted to say to the future. As he was on his knees digging through his closet, a familiar voice called out to him.

"Just what are you doing, Kermit?"

Kermit stuck his head out of the closet and suddenly hopped up to his feet.

"Jansen! It's been a while! I'm looking for something to put inside of this time capsule thing that Ijames came up with. What have you been up to? Did you find it?" Kermit asked.

Jansen had just come back from an absence that spanned for about three weeks. Before he left, he told Kermit that his goal was going to be to find an edge of the universe.

"Time capsule, hmm…" Jansen said scratching his head, "No, I had to postpone that trip. Something came to my attention while I was away, and I made it my top priority to get back here as soon as possible."

"Really? What happened?" Kermit asked taking a seat on the floor.

"Well…" Jansen started pacing, "To tell you the truth I don't really know about it myself. It happened so fast, and I had to make my decisions based on instincts. As soon as I leave here, I'm going to ask about what I saw."

"You're leaving again so soon… This must really be causing you some trouble," Kermit said, "Where will you go?"

Jansen stopped pacing and stared ahead into the wall.

"I've heard rumors in my travels for some time now that there is a wise man who resides somewhere in a galaxy far away from this one. I made a note of the stories I heard about him, but I never had any real incentive to go and see him. Now I have one. I have to find out what it all means..." Jansen turned to Kermit and added, "I'm leaving right away."

"But I don't understand…" Kermit said standing up, "You just got here. Why didn't you just go straight there if you're leaving so quickly?"

Jansen laughed. "You make it seem like you don't want me to come here at all."

"I don't mean it that way." Kermit said scowling, "It's really confusing is all I'm saying."

"Okay, I get you. You're right. In all seriousness, this journey that I'm going on will be the longest one that I have ever taken. I don't know for sure how long I'll be gone. It might be a year… maybe two years... maybe ten. It's a good thing your birthday is on a leap year. That way it'll only seem like two years!" Jansen joked, but Kermit remained serious. Sensing Kermit's frustration, Jansen went on, "Either way… I have to get some answers to my questions. The wise man has now become a very important goal of mine, but before I left to look for him I knew that I had to come here and speak to you. I knew that I had to look you in the eyes and tell you something very important."

A silence elapsed between them, and in that moment Kermit could have sworn that he heard a mouse squeak.

"What is it?" Kermit asked. His eyes briefly flashed a glance over in the direction where he thought the mouse was located. After that, he focused completely on Jansen and his words. Kermit was so focused, in fact, that he failed to consider the possibility that the sound he had just heard was actually his mother approaching his room door as silently as she could.

"This will be the last thing I tell you before I leave. Your mother is outside of your room right now, so you shouldn't say anything in response."

Kermit nodded.

"Earth is about to change for good. I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but I do know that it's huge. I want you to be very careful in the coming years. Trust your gut, but watch your step at the same time. Got it?"

Kermit, although confused, nodded.

"And one more thing: Tell your friend Leslie Moira not to go to Chicago."

Kermit frowned. Leslie was going to leave in about three weeks.

"Everything I just told you came into my knowledge because of the journey that I just experienced. Like I said, I don't really understand it all, and I have a lot of questions to ask. In the time that I'm gone, earth will leave my sight, and I'm going to have just as hard of a time coming back as I will have going out."

Jansen reached into his pocket and pulled out a watch. He checked it and wound it three times before putting back into his pocket again.

"I have to go."

Kermit stood.

"Take care," Jansen said.

And then he was gone.

Kermit opened and closed his mouth staring bewildered at the spot where Jansen had just stood. He slapped his head sharply, walked to his door, and threw it open very suddenly. Outside in the hall he saw his mother pretending to align some photos hanging on the wall.

"I told you before," Kermit said to his mother, "I don't talk to imaginary people anymore. You may still think I'm only four, but I deserve a little more respect than this. And don't make a joke about the leap year either."

Kermit slammed the door before his mother could respond.

After lying on his bed for a few minutes thinking about what Jansen had just said, he took out a piece of paper and a pen, and he sat at his desk. He decided to write a letter to Jansen that would guide him back to earth. That letter, Kermit Kinnard determined, would be the lighthouse at one end of the universe that would make Jansen's journey that much swifter and that much safer.

The words that Jansen would have spoken when he opened and closed his mouth probably would have sounded something like this: "Will do."


	9. Insanity

One day, a curious twelve-year-old boy who was interested in astronomy went into a public library and started leafing though every oversized cosmology book he could find. He was looking for full-blown color pictures of phenomenon that were hypothesized to occur in space. More often than not he found what he was not looking for. He didn't want to see nebulae, stars, super novae, asteroids, comets, and gaseous planets. All of that just wouldn't do. They were all proven to exist at some point during some time within the universe. No, this boy wanted to set his eyes on the imagination of space: to see the things that could be there, but couldn't be there at the same time. It took him about an hour before he came across a penciling that almost made his eyes pop out of his skull. Underneath the detailed drawing, there was a long-winded caption that he didn't bother to read. In his mind, he saw all that he needed to see, and he quickly bustled over to a copy machine so he could take his discovery with him.

Outside of the library, his mother called his name.

"Jake! Over here! Did you find want you were looking for?" she said.

"Yes, mom," Jake said making his way over to his mother. He grasped the photocopy of the drawing in his hands and he looked down to eyeball it once more. When he did so, he lost track of his surroundings and he bumped directly into a girl wearing a backpack. Jake fell down right onto his butt and dropped his picture onto the ground. The girl tuned to face Jake, and she bent down to his level. As Jake rubbed his behind for comfort, the girl picked up the photocopy.

"Are you okay?" she said.

Jake looked up, and his eyes met hers. This girl was none other than Leslie Moira.

"Black Holes," he said pointing to the picture and then to Leslie.

She continued to look into his eyes indifferently.

"Your eyes are like Black Holes." With that Jake snatched his picture out of Leslie's hand and quickly made his way to his mother's side.

Leslie stood up and blinked at the ground.

"That's a good thing," she said.

Coincidentally or not, Jake's observation pointed out a very important flaw of Leslie Moira. Black Holes are noted for their ability to suck matter into their grasp. Supposedly, even light itself cannot wiggle free of the density and gravity of a Black Hole. Analogously, Leslie Moira soaked every piece of information small and large into her brain, and within her psyche, she thought and thought about what it all was and what it was all for. Leslie had kept those secret thoughts in a vault that did not open for anyone. In a grander scheme, it was like she was keeping a puzzle in her head with an infinite number of pieces constantly slapping together and rearranging here and there. She had no idea what the picture would turn out to look like, but she knew that there was indeed a picture to create.

If light was one of those puzzle pieces, it would not have escaped from her.

Now, this flaw may not seem like it's that bad, but Leslie's mental dedication to the puzzle led to the corruption of what many consider to be normal functions of the central nervous system. Her brain functioned in a different way biologically and psychologically than doctors said it was supposed to function. To put it other words, she was sick. To put it in yet another set of words, she was insane.

Leslie Moira's insanity was unique, however. All in all there were only two symptoms that manifested themselves in her everyday machinations. The first symptom was that the only response her brain could generate to the sensation of pain both mental and physical was within the speech center of her brain. Whenever Leslie felt or experienced such pain, her brain would ignite her speech center to spit out just one single word: Ouch.

The second symptom was one that Leslie had kept to herself as a golden secret for years and years. She couldn't remember when it all started, but at some point in her life, she started to see white strings that linked everything around her together. When she bought an object she noticed that a new string would grow from the object to her self. When she first became friends with Aisa, she saw a new string suddenly connect both of them together. She saw strings everywhere, and certain ones made a kind of map that helped her find and put together more and more puzzle pieces. In that sense, her disease was self-perpetuating. Leslie also noticed that there was one string that she had had all of her life. This string came right out of her heart and traveled off way over the horizon. Leslie knew exactly where that string was connected: the city of Chicago.

It was because of these strings that Leslie was so good at chess. She could easily see the patterns that each piece made because of the strings they left behind on the board. It was also because of these strings that Leslie was curious about her friends. For some reason, possibly because of his stories, Gus had thousands and thousands of strings tied together like knots jutting out of his skull. For some reason, possibly because she walked around so much, Aisa had so many strings attached to her that Leslie could barely see her face or her body. At times, talking to Aisa was like talking to a ball of yarn. For some reason, possibly because of his great memory, Ijames had innumerable thick and intricately laced strings that all connected to his brain. And for some reason, Kermit usually always had one string coming from his head that constantly stuck straight up into space reaching further than the eye could see.

These strings also had something to do with what happened to Leslie after she handed her notebook to Ijames Noa for the time capsule. See, some of these strings could connect objects and people through time and space. During that day, Leslie accidentally tripped over a string that had been in existence when she was born and would remain unbroken when the plague would descend upon the earth. That was why she saw what she saw, and that was how she knew to speak those words: "This is it."

About that notebook which was buried into the ground: it was Leslie Moira's most precious treasure. Within that notebook, Leslie had compiled her story telling of her life with strings and puzzle pieces. That notebook contained the only references she ever made to any one of those things. It was the only moment she opened her vault, the only time she shared her most sacred of thoughts, and the only time light would ever escape the Black Hole, so to speak.

About two weeks before Leslie Moira would leave Pittsburgh to follow her string connecting her heart to Chicago, Kermit Kinnard walked to her house. He walked as slowly as he could, and when he got there he found her doing some work in the backyard. He walked slowly during the entire trip because he was in deep thought.

He was strategizing how to tell her not to go without having to mention one name: Jansen.


	10. Trust

And so, the conversation between a free man from the high hill and the great gray fortress began:

"Hey, Leslie Moira."

Leslie looked up from her tasks in the yard. She was checking the plants that had rooted into the ground for bugs and insects. Leslie's father enjoyed growing his own vegetables from time to time, but he often forgot the smaller more intricate responsibilities that lied in their cultivation. Leslie took it upon herself to handle those responsibilities whenever her father did not.

Upon seeing Kermit, she stood, walked over to a small maple tree that was growing in the yard, and sat down resting her back against the bark. She took a deep breath and looked at Kermit as he positioned himself into the shade of the tree. He sat down in front of her. Somehow, Kermit felt a pang of familiarity with the situation.

"What's up, Kermit Kinnard?" Leslie said.

He stared down at the grass. In a way, he was begging Mother Earth to give him an epiphany that would make what he was about to say a little easier. The Mother did not baby her child, however, and to Kermit's chagrin, the grass said nothing.

"Nothing," Kermit said. The minute the word escaped his mouth he cursed at himself for sheer stupidity.

Leslie took another deep breath. "Nothing…" she said exhaling, "Is that so?"

Kermit was lost. Any plan that he had had disintegrated in a wave of bumbling nervousness and idiocy. He would again curse at himself after saying, "Uhh... yeah."

Leslie looked at Kermit appraisingly. He still had that same string jutting from his head into the atmosphere. She noticed that he was purposely avoiding direct eye contact, and she could guess why he had come. Leslie decided to take things into her own hands.

"Kermit," she said, "have you ever worried about the future? Have you wondered if things would go your way, or if life would turn out the way you wanted it to?"

"Yeah," he said thankful that she had taken the reigns, "but I would say that anyone does that."

"Yes. So would I. But if you believe that then why don't you do it now? Why don't you say what's actually on your mind? If something's bothering you then you should spit it out."

Kermit got the point. "Okay. I get the point. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be such a damn idiot. I just came over to talk to you about Chicago."

"Okay."

"Why are you going to Chicago, Leslie?" he asked. Kermit knew the answer to this question. He just wanted to hear her say it again.

"I'm going to college early to take summer classes because I want to try graduating in two years. After that, I'm heading to a different school to study something else." Leslie blinked. "But you already know that. I told you before."

Kermit sighed. "You didn't answer my question, Leslie. Why are you going to Chicago? Why Chicago?"

Leslie nodded lightly. "I was born in Chicago, and I lived there most of my life. I want to go back to see if it has anything left to teach me."

"But Chicago isn't the only city on earth! You could have gone to any place you wanted, but you chose University of Chicago."

Kermit was right. Leslie Moira's academic swagger had attracted a lot of attention during her years in high school. Some schools literally threw their doors open to her in an attempt to recruit her.

See, it was a well-kept secret that any college, in addition to being an educational institution, was also a full-fledged business. As a business, it was common practice for a particular college to use famous graduates to advertise to incoming students about the benefits of attending that particular school. The logic was this: So-and-so went here, and So-and-so became great. Therefore, if you go here, you will also become great (maybe even as great as So-and-so.)

Many believed that Leslie would become the "So-and-so" of their advertising dreams, so she was courted to enroll in different colleges and universities on an almost daily basis. Some of those schools were so prestigious they would have made Uvrith Ashk drool. In fact, when Uvrith Ashk got word of the places that had taken an interest in Leslie, he did drool. He wondered which one she would choose. Which one would help her on her path to the Sun?

Anyway, Leslie picked at a strand of her hair and held it straight into the sky. She was imitating Kermit's string, though she knew her hair was nowhere near as long.

"You're right. It's not the only city. But that's why I'm going to study somewhere else also. It's not like I'll stay in Chicago for the rest of my life. Why does it matter to you anyway?" She let her hair fall into its normal place. "Just a few weeks ago you said you were happy for me. What's up?"

Kermit Kinnard decided to charge ahead. "You shouldn't go," he said, "I've got a bad feeling. I don't know what's going to happen, but I know that it's going to be huge. I'm just worried. Why don't you wait until the summer is over and just go when the regular school year starts? If nothing happens, I won't say anything when you decide to leave again." Kermit did his best to duplicate Jansen's words before he left. Jansen, of course, was on the other end of Kermit's string working his way deeper and deeper into the cosmos.

Jansen had instructed Kermit to tell Leslie not to go to Chicago at all, but the urgency in Jansen's voice when he spoke about what was coming suggested to Kermit that whatever was going to happen was going to happen soon.

Leslie, in a rare moment, was at a loss for explanation. "What are you so worried about, Kermit? Are you afraid of a plane crash or something?"

"I don't know, Leslie! I just don't know… I do know that you shouldn't go, though," he said looking back to the grass.

Leslie thought. There was a long silence between them. She didn't know what to think. She could tell that Kermit was being sincere and honest with his declarations, but she just couldn't agree to his proposition. That string in her heart tugged at her every minute of every day. Chicago was more than a place where she wanted to be. For some reason, it was the place where she _had_ to be.

Kermit stared and stared at that green grass with intense focus. The quiet was so deep that he could have sworn that he did finally hear Mother Earth answering his plea from earlier. Kermit was so focused on the grass, in fact, that he failed to consider that the sound he heard was actually Leslie climbing to her knees and moving next to him.

Kermit felt a pair of arms wrap around him as Leslie slowly pulled his head into her chest. She embraced him very softly like he was a newborn child. She spoke with an equal degree of care.

"Kermit," she said, "There is just too much left for me to do. Do you really think that anything would happen to me before I finished? Do you really think that this is the end? I carry too much to let it all drop right now. Trust me with this load. Trust me. Can you do that for me?"

Coincidentally or not, as Kermit was held in the arms of the great grey fortress, he felt safer and more secure than he ever had in his entire life. He began to cry.

Leslie was one of his best friends. He didn't want to lose her. Jansen's warning was frightening and ominous, but inside of Leslie Moira's force field that fear was moot. He was still worried about the trip to Chicago, but the fact that she was stolid and unwavering made him consider that it did not matter. He couldn't decide what to do anymore, so he went with the one concrete idea that stuck inside of his mind.

"Yes," Kermit Kinnard said with tears still coming down his face, "I can trust you, Leslie."


	11. How You Think

Now, Leslie adhered to a very strict belief in situations where she did not know anything. Contrary to most people in such predicaments, Leslie did, indeed, believe that she did not know anything. That is to say, she made no assumptions, she considered anything to be a possibility, and she operated under the suspicion that conclusions were theoretical rather than factual. So, even though she firmly believed in the words she spoke to Kermit Kinnard, Leslie still continued to think about their talk for a long time afterward. Where most might imagine that Kermit's warning was based on anxiety about travel and the loss of a good friend, Leslie considered otherwise. After all, for all she knew, Kermit's string might reach up past the sky, past the galaxy, past space, into heaven, and connect to God him or her self. This, of course, was assuming that God and heaven existed.

Either way, Leslie just didn't know.

A few days later, she even spoke with Aisa Fryman about it.

"Don't think about it so much," Aisa said, "he was probably just worried about the trip. I am too. Whenever someone leaves it's kinda hard."

"Yeah, but this was different," Leslie contemplated, "Why would he start getting worried so suddenly? It just doesn't make sense."

"Who knows… maybe he saw a movie or something that freaked him out," Aisa said shrugging her shoulders. She didn't know either.

"Well, I think it's a safe bet to say that something probably happened to him in-between the time I first told everybody about Chicago and a few days ago when we talked."

"What's that… like a one-month window?"

"Yeah," Leslie said, "I wonder what could have happened."

It was a weekend, and Leslie had decided to accompany Aisa during one of her choice long walks. A few hours already past since they started, and neither one of them knew where they were. Things looked less and less like Pittsburgh. It didn't seem like a city anymore. The air was country fresh and the field-of-vision wide. It was a foreign surrounding that they were exploring for the first time. Unknown was everywhere. They pressed on.

"You're about to start. I know you when you get like this," Aisa said nodding her head, "It's times like these when I know that you're a little different than everyone else."

"What do you mean?" Leslie asked.

"You're about to do one of your genius things where you kind of leave everyone else behind in the dust. It's a little scary, but it's also kind of cool and fun."

Behind them, a truck snuck up on the road and passed them by. It had the word _FedEx_ written on its back. Leslie stopped and pointed at it.

"Do you see the white arrow in-between the 'E' and the 'x'?" she asked.

Asia looked at it carefully. She squinted her eyes. When the truck rolled out of sight she sighed. "I couldn't see it."

"That's probably a good thing," Leslie said, "Because after you see it for the first time, you'll never be able to look at it again without seeing it. That white arrow changes how you think."

"Hmm… something that small can change how you think?"

"Yep. That's why it's also important to be able to ignore the arrow and look at it the way you would if you didn't know it existed. That way you can think in two ways." Leslie stuck her tongue out at the last place where she saw the truck.

They started walking again.

It is worth noting at this point that, beyond the fact that she did not see the white arrow, Aisa didn't really get what Leslie was talking about. It was no fault on her part. Aisa, in fact, picked up on a lot more of the subtle hints Leslie gave about the mysterious linkages between seeming randomness than anyone else.

No one could say for sure whether Leslie gave those hints on purpose or whether she did so unconsciously. The reason for that is because no one asked her. Either way, it was likely that those particles of commentary that Leslie issued forth every once and a while were products of the strings that her madness caused her to see.

The connection that Leslie made at this moment was between the empty white arrow and Kermit Kinnard. Just as there was a void of blank empty space in-between the "E" and the "x" that shaped the appearance of the word on the truck, there was a void of blank empty space between Kermit's initial reaction to Leslie's announcement that she was going to Chicago and the warning he gave just a few weeks later. This void of space made a shape slightly bigger than an arrow, however. It was shaping the outlook of the future.

Though Aisa didn't get it, she did get that something had just gone over her head. "See, this was what I was talking about," she said waving a finger into the air. "You certainly are strange, Leslie." She walked a couple more steps before cracking a smile and laughing. "But still, I wouldn't want things any other way... Why don't you finish telling me what you were thinking about Kermit?"

"Are you sure? You said it was scary," Leslie said looking up to the sky.

"Yes, I did." Aisa said definitively, "But I also said it was cool."

Leslie smiled. They walked for a few more steps before she said, "Aisa, I'm sure that something big is happening, but just because it's big doesn't mean that I'm supposed to avoid it. I know where I want to be, and that's where I will be. I'll take this one precaution, though." Leslie had stopped walking. "Will you do me a favor?" she asked.

Aisa paused and looked carefully at Leslie. "Name it," she said.

Leslie drew air from the well of oxygen surrounding her. Then she looked at the clouds and said, "If something happens to me or if you don't hear from me for a long time after I leave, promise me that you will dig up Ijames' time capsule and take out the book that I put inside. I want you to read it. I know that I'm a pretty strange person to be around, but what's inside that book might help you understand me a little better. I have really appreciated your friendship over these years. You deserve it the most."

The wind blew gently, whistling faintly past open ears. It was the only sound that came for a long while.

"Leslie, this would be one of those times when you're being scary," Aisa said with a worried look on her face.

"Aisa…" Leslie said turning her gaze to meet Aisa's eyes, "promise me you'll get that book." Leslie's strength was seeping through her eyes again. In a way, it scared Aisa into submission.

"I promise. You can count on me."

"Thank you," Leslie said softly. She took a deep breath and sighed.

Aisa was still staring though Leslie had closed her eyes to give them a rest. The air felt ill. Aisa wanted to give it some medication: "Geez, but nothing is going to happen anyway so it doesn't even matter."

That seemed to do the trick.

Aisa looked around at the now healthy surroundings. Through the intricate magic of ignorance she had failed to notice her last few steps. Lying beneath her feet was a paved road. Sitting to her left and right were open clearings. Behind her, the large buildings at the center of Pittsburgh city could be seen, but they looked only like small, gentle gray shadows. The great grey fortress was there too—hand reaching to her face shielding a yawn away from the rest of the world. The sun was high, but it was beyond its apex making its way down to the horizon. It wanted to hide from the moon before night fell.

"By the way," Aisa asked, "where do you think we ended up?"

It was an odd, curious, ironic, coincidentally or not thing for Leslie Moira to say what she said next. This is what she said:

"We're on the surface."

This may or may not have been another one of Leslie's hints.

It is crucial to pause the conversation at this point to divulge some very relevant, seemingly digressive information. See, every now and then Gus Little would go through a brief respite in which he would convince himself that he could, indeed, tell the stories floating around in his head. During such daring moments he would write or draw or film his ideas at an almost frantic pace in an almost vain attempt to finish before his sudden inspiration wore off. All in all, Gus had only completely finished thirty-seven of the onehundredthirteenthousandsixhundredtwentyone and still counting stories his imagination had blueprinted. Of those thirty-seven stories, Gus was unhappy with how every single one had turned out.

Frustration, in this situation, was an understatement.

Roughly, if that huge number were to be broken down, it would mean that the stack of papers that Gus contributed to the time capsule—the one with all of his stories compressed into compact little summaries—was around 5,681 pages long.

Still, frustration did not stop Gus from sharing his few completed works with a few of his closest friends. Maybe… just maybe, Gus hoped, someone would give him the clue he was lacking that would help him perfectly tell the tale.

It was one of these unsatisfactorily completed stories that Leslie referenced when she said what she said. Gus finished it during their third year of high school. After he was done typing it up, he found his friend one by one in different parts of the school and threw it into their hands. He was quite proud of it at first:

"Commit this to memory," he said to Ijames giving Ijames a copy of the book.

Ijames shrugged compliantly scratching away at his arm.

"Tell me what you think of this froggy," he said to Kermit, giving Kermit a copy of the book.

Kermit was slightly pissed, but he took it anyway. He didn't hesitate to give Gus a death-stare.

He gave a copy to Leslie not saying anything. Leslie touched her index finger to her thumb. This is what those fingers said: OK.

And finally there was Aisa. "Hey, Aisa! I got you a surprise! It's an IQ test. If you're able to read it, I might be slightly more convinced that you're not an idiot!" he joked flapping the story around in the air.

"Shut up, Gus!" Aisa snapped back. "I already heard about your story from everyone else. You couldn't be more of a jerk!"

Gus was slightly taken aback. Aisa was being serious. "Okay," he said. "I'm sorry I bothered you." Gus turned to leave, taking the final copy with him.

Suddenly, he heard Aisa yelling at him from behind. "What the hell are you doing?! Give me the damn story!" She rushed over and snatched it from his hand.

"Well, I thought you didn't want it! What the hell!?" Gus fumed in confusion.

Aisa took a deep breath. "Don't think, Gus. Just stop thinking. It's not very befitting of you." With that, she walked away. "My life," she continued to herself, "is going to be so much easier after this is over."

It was only after he had passed out his work and after he had read through the entire thing for the first time himself that Gus realized that he had created yet another miserable failure.

The story was about three young boys who spent their time adventuring on the surface of Earth years and years after a fabulous cataclysm had wiped out most of the population. They would play or fight or ask questions about god or why everything under the sky looked so dead and barren or where they were going to find something to eat. One boy was named Yolseph, one boy was named Asa, and the last had no name. The nameless boy was the was the narrator.

Yolseph was the oldest, and he tended to lead them around from place to place. He was an interesting character because he had an odd bulge protruding forth from his stomach. Yolseph always had the bulge covered with his shirt at all times. He protected it with his life.

For some reason, whenever the three boys were playing in, on, or within the rubble of the surface of earth and they heard a low humming sound, they would drop whatever they where doing and run and duck under into the protection of broken down subway tunnels.

When Yolseph ran, his bulge jiggled.

They would huddle together as the sound passed by. It was crucial that they try to stay as still as possible.

"It's going to be a long time before we can go back to the surface," Yolseph would say.

"Tell us the story…" Asa would say, "tell us the story about Eddie."

And then Yolseph would think for a second and finally tell the story.

Eddie, according to Yolseph, was an individual who walked the Earth whenever he pleased. Even when the low humming sound came, he wasn't afraid. In fact, the humming sound would even stop if Eddie got close enough to it.

Apparently, Eddie was a messiah of sorts because he walked the earth for the sake of those who hid in tunnels. He walked the Earth for people like Asa, Yolseph, and the nameless.

The story would get sad at that point because Eddie, as Yolseph told it, died. He didn't just die, either. He was absolutely obliterated into nothingness by a lightening bolt. The survivors of earth didn't even have a relic of Eddie to worship in hard times.

Now, Yolseph would tell the tale of Eddie three times during the course of Gus Little's story, but it was only during the last one, when things were looking really bad, that Yolseph continued the story into an area that he had never discussed before.

"But Eddie's coming back," Yolseph said. "I know for a fact."

"How do you know?" Asa asked.

And then Yolseph showed them what he was hiding inside of his bulge. He held it at arms length, dangling it in front of their faces. It was a pair of red sneakers.

"They belong to him," Yolseph said, "And he'll come back to get them."

That gave them hope.

The story was unimaginatively named "Eddie."

Getting back on track:

Aisa laughed. "I read that too. This is nowhere near as bad as 'the surface.'" Aisa made air quotes around "the" and "surface."

Aisa was right. It was nowhere near as bad as the catastrophe that Gus described in his story, but the reason that Leslie's comment was an odd, curious, ironic, coincidentally or not thing was not because of where they were or what they were doing.

The odd string that she tripped over back at the time capsule had left her with some residual effects. See, Leslie's comment wouldn't become an odd, curious, ironic, coincidentally or not thing until after she and Aisa walked back to Pittsburgh. And then it wouldn't happen until after she packed her bags. And then it wouldn't happen until after she said goodbye to everyone a day before she left. In fact, it wouldn't even happen until after Leslie Moira walked on board a plane inbound for Chicago and it took off under the power of its screaming engines.

The anticipation was maddening. Kermit Kinnard stared and stared at his wall on the day that Leslie left. He wanted to be positive. He wanted to be as strong as Leslie. But he couldn't do it. He just stared and stared. He was waiting.

And then it came.


	12. Magic and the Perspective of Bop

A woman named Janice Hall born on August 14, 1990 was in the middle of a conversation with her mother.

"Mom," she said, "me and Robert are coming down to Chicago in a couple of weeks to visit. We have some really big news to tell you."

Janice Hall lived in New York City. The news that she was planning to deliver with her visit was that Robert, an insurance salesman from Albany, had proposed to her for marriage. She was now betrothed. Janice wanted to surprise her parents with the engagement and consult them for a good time of year at which to set their wedding.

"Oooo… that sounds exciting," Janice's mother responded with glee, "I'll be sure to tell your father as soon as he gets back."

"I don't want to give anything away," Janice said enthusiastically. "You guys are going to flip. I can't wait to tell you— Anyway, how is everything else?"

"Well," Janice's mother took a breath to oxygenate her thoughts, "you know your father. He's always getting himself—"

In mid sentence, the phone went silent. Janice Hall stared at her receiver with her eyebrows lightly compressed into a frown. She hung up and dialed her parents' number again. When she placed the phone to her ear, and electronic woman's monotonous voice lazily climbed through the speaker.

"We're sorry," she said without sorrow, "the number you have dialed," she proceeded to read back each digit of Janice's parents' phone number robotically, "is not available. If you need assistance please refer to an operator," she said without sincerity, "or if you would like to make another call, please hang up and try again."

Janice obeyed. She placed the phone carefully in its cradle. She reasoned that it was just a simple problem with the simple phone lines and her simple mother would call back as soon as she simply could.

She was, quite understandably, wrong.

A man named Rayford Jamison born March 2, 1979 sat in Boston Logan International Airport reading through some documents for a business meeting that would take place the next day. He had already gone over the material enough times to memorize its content, but he decided to occupy himself with another read through rather than sit in the airport in abject boredom.

After whisking his way through the monthly profit data yet again, he packed everything away back into his briefcase. He then carefully checked that he would leave nothing behind and left his seat in search of an update on his flight itinerary.

He quickly found a board of television monitors displaying tidbits of important facts about each flight that was coming and going to Boston Logan. He scanned the board looking for his flight number. It didn't take long for him to find it. He focused on the line of information pertaining to his flight.

This is what it read:

1188 CHICAGO, IL 6:29P ON-TIME B17

Rayford Jamison nodded his head and shuffled his feet. He pulled the right sleeve of his shirt back and checked his watch.

This is what is read:

5:14 pm

He nodded his head again and looked back up to the holy board of information a second time.

At first it read the same thing. The gate was still B17, the flight number was still 1188, the destination was still Chicago, Illinois, the departure time was still 6:29 pm, and the flight was still on time. But just as he was about turn and leave, the monitor he was watching blinked before his very eyes. He had to find his flight again. He did. It was different than before.

This is what it had become:

1188 CHICAGO, IL 6:29P CANCELLED B17

Rayford gaped at what he saw. Internally, he swore. He briskly walked off to find a help desk and discover what was going on. He decided that it was the weather or some kind of a technical problem. If worst came to worst, he would just have to take the train.

He was wrong. And the train was cancelled too.

A meteorologist in Indianapolis, Indiana named James Wilhelm born December 28, 1982 was checking over satellite live feed images for nearby cities when he saw something that made him scratch his head in skepticism.

James Wilhelm ran to a recording of the live feed and wound it backwards. He watched the tape over and over twenty-four times in a row. Every time, he would set the tape back so that the display clock read 5:14pm. And every time he would push the play button with his heart slamming heavily against his ribs. And every time, about twenty seconds into the minute, he would stare at Chicago, Illinois and gasp at the impossibility of what it was and what it had become.

It was impossible. It had to be. He knew that his equipment was failing. There was no way that what he was seeing could possibly be real.

He played the tape for a twenty-fifth time. Unbelievable. Where did it go? How could something become nothing?

"No," he said. "This is a dream."

Minutes later he received a call from a group of colleagues in New Mexico. They had seen the same thing. Slowly, as more and more calls came into his station, he was beginning to realize a fundamental truth:

He was, indeed, wrong.

About thirty miles outside of Chicago, Illinois, a Greyhound bus was traveling along a highway strip with a grand view of the city skyline. At around 5:14pm the bus slammed its breaks in the middle of the highway. Many other vehicles did the same. People were pouring out of their cars staring in disbelief. They looked back and forth at each other confirming that they were still in reality.

"Did you see that?!" They said.

"What the hell is going on?!" They said.

"Unbelievable!" They said.

Aboard that Greyhound bus was a man named Bop Knobley. Now, if Bop ever visited any doctors, he would have been labeled certifiably insane. He had managed to pass underneath the mentally handicapped radar of the state because he still had enough faculties about him to fill out taxes and handle welfare requirements. So, all was well for Bop on paper.

Bop was 54-years-old, and he believed more strongly than anything else in magic. To Bop Knobley, magic was the only thing important in life. In fact, to Bop Knobley, magic was life itself.

When Bop emerged from that Greyhound bus with everyone else, he had seen full and well what had taken place, yet he wore look of understanding rather than shock or surprise.

"Why is everyone acting like that?" he said after a minute had past, "That's the oldest trick in the book. It disappeared. Nothing more. Nothing Less."

Bop looked around. No one was listening.

"Poof," he said shrugging his shoulders.

Oddly enough, Bop Knobley was right. Chicago, in all its grandeur, had disappeared.

Poof. And everyone and everything was gone.


	13. The Hobos Comfort

It didn't take long for the news to spread. The event was quickly referred to as the most unprecedented in all of history. People were gone, but there was no tangible evidence of the vacancy with which they had left the earth. For many it was difficult to swallow, and for others it was impossible. How could they be gone? They asked. Even so, those almost maggoty humans adhered to the cannon of disaster in the absence of answers, and the nation set to work.

This, among other things, is what they did:

All airlines were grounded for safety. Roadblocks were put into place for any path leading into the heart of what was Chicago. Leaders of the United States went into immediate council. Members of the Army Reserves were activated and called to the outskirts of Chicago to help with the breaking panic and the massive backups of traffic. Phone call after phone call flooded into press offices, police stations, and emergency contact lines. Twomilliononehundredtwentythreethousandfourhundredeightyfour people were reported missing, and the number was rising with every call.

A press conference was held at the White House, the home of the President of the United States, informing citizens to stay calm in the wake of what was happening. The government, representatives told the press and the nation, was doing the best it could to find out what had taken place and if it was connected to any foreign threats or attacks. Citizens were instructed to hope for the best and to report if anyone they knew was in Chicago at the time of the incident.

"This is unlike anything we have ever seen before," they told the people. "We don't know what to make of it. We know just as much as you. There are no explanations as of yet."

There was an eerie stillness about the press conference. Even the most imaginative of the reporters, even the ones who could manipulate words and generate stories from almost nothing, had difficulty pulling speculation out of their ass let alone their brains.

"So what will happen?" they asked.

"We already said that we have no idea. We just don't know. As of this moment, we can just advise that all citizens stay in their homes and try to remain calm…" they told the people. "Keep your faith above all else," they added.

Even the hobos on the street, coincidentally or not, crawled into their boxes for comfort.

Back at 5:20pm, when the initial satellite imagery confirmed that something suspicious had taken place in the Chicago area, the Air Force dispatched groups of scouting planes to make a survey run. Apparently, they had found something of intrigue. Land based military corps were radioed an approximate position and they quickly went in to pick it up.

Inexplicably, amid the growing toll of the missing, amid the contagious panic, and amid the babbling idiocy of the realists, someone was still there.


	14. A Dramatic Program

Kermit's mother was wiping tears from her eyes when she knocked on his door. He didn't respond. Kermit Kinnard was lying on the floor staring up at the white ceiling of his room. He was trying to discover the point at which nothing became something and something became everything. He thought of Jansen and wondered where he was. Then he thought of Leslie and wondered if she had made it Chicago. It was at that moment when his mother opened the door. She did so slowly. Kermit still didn't respond.

"Kermit?" she choked out in a whisper.

"Yes, Mom," he said still gazing at the emptiness above him. His mother had entered into his peripheral vision. Still, his focus did not waver.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes, Mom. I'm fine Mom." His tone was empty.

"That's good," his mother said putting a hand to her mouth. She bit the knuckle of her thumb. The pain made it easier for her to avoid succumbing to her welling emotions.

"Listen to me, Kermit."

"I am, Mom."

Suddenly she was furious.

"No! Look at me!" she screamed. Honestly, She would rather be angry than sad.

Kermit closed his eyes and rolled his head. When he opened them again, they were fixed upon his mother.

"Kermit…" she said as tears started penetrate through her features. "Kermit, something happened."

Kermit's dreamy gaze faded away. He eyes became wide, his nose flared, and his eyebrows contorted into a frown. He slowly stood keeping his eyes on his mother the entire time.

"Tell me," he said feeling the adrenaline rise through his body.

"Chicago… your friend Leslie… no one knows what's going on," she forced out each word with so much labor that it made her weak.

"What…?" Kermit said approaching her, "WHAT?!! TELL ME!!"

"Television…" she said with her tears coming through faster, "Look at the television…"

Kermit didn't hesitate. He bolted down a flight of steps to the living room as quickly as he could. His mother followed, walking step by step at a grim pace.

She didn't cry for her own pain. She cried for Kermit. She knew that Leslie—that all of his friends—were special to him, and for one to be taken away from him by something so unreal was absolutely tragic. It wasn't just tragic: it was, by her own supposedly universal calculations, wrong. Why did this happen? She asked. Why?

By the time she got down to the living room Kermit was getting situated to leave the house. His keys and a cellular phone were sitting on a desk in front of him as he hastily threw on his sneakers.

Before she could ask, Kermit said, "I'm going to Leslie's house. I already tried calling her directly. But she isn't too big on phones, so I don't know. In the worst case… well, I don't want to think about that right now. I just need to go. Her parents will know more than anyone else."

Kermit's mother looked at the television. It was off.

"Did you watch it? Did you see what happened?" she asked.

"No," he said grabbing the items from the desk and scanning around the room to make sure he was taking everything of relevance. "I don't need to."

"But—"

"Mom," Kermit interrupted giving her a brief hug. "I'll find out when I get there. That's that."

He was out the door before she could say a thing.

Now, as he ran to that house, Kermit Kinnard was contemplating something that Jansen had told him a long time ago. As it turns out, he knew the exact reason for which his mother was shedding tears. He knew that her tears were for the pain and the fear that was set to grip him tightly as soon as he saw whatever he was going to see on the television. But, even so, he felt a pang of resentment toward his mother. For all of the years that he was sent to those psychiatric clinics, she never even once stopped to consider the pain that he felt when he was telling the truth and everyone else, including her, believed him to be a liar. For that reason, he believed his mother's sadness to be naïve and disrespecting. But that wasn't it.

One day Kermit had come home from school after miserably failing a test for which he was woefully unprepared, and he couldn't help but complain to Jansen about how unfair it was and how the teacher had snuck material in that did not seem relevant.

"I hate this," Kermit had said to Jansen, "Why do I have to have that teacher? It just sucks! Why me?"

Jansen just laughed.

"W- Why are you laughing?! I'm being serious!" Kermit said infuriated.

"I know…" Jansen whimpered through his laughter, "that's why it's so hilarious!"

Kermit turned his back to Jansen and crashed down onto his bed.

"You're just being a jerk," he said into his sheets.

"Kermit… it's not like that," Jansen said finally cooling down.

"No-No. By all means, laugh it up!" Kermit snapped back. "I'll just lie here and figure out what I'll do next if I can concentrate over your cackling."

"There. That's an idea I can live with," Jansen said definitively.

Kermit sighed. "What are you talking about?"

Jansen stood and stretched his legs.

"Kermit," he said, "for the longest time humans have amazed me for many things. But the thing that gets me the most is the way you all perceive everything that's going on around you."

"Like how?" Kermit asked not truly interested.

Jansen didn't care. "So many of you think you're involved in some 'master plan' of the universe, and things happen to you because you have been handpicked. It's like every human lives on a stage and they all act out and perform this elaborate play for this unknown audience member with a huge magnifying glass in their hand. Now, I'm not saying this is bad, but sometimes people get so caught up in their performance that they forget what they are and that they have a level of control over what happens around them. Instead of thinking about what they can do, they think about why they are in the middle of it… Instead of thinking about how things are right, they only think about how they are wrong. So you shouldn't just randomly complain and ask why you are you. Kermit Kinnard is Kermit Kinnard. Do what you have to do."

A moment of silence elapsed in which Jansen went over into a corner of the room and started consider some calculations for his next adventure.

"Jansen?" Kermit asked with his face still in the sheets.

"Yo."

"Who is the audience member with the magnifying glass?" Kermit turned his body to face Jansen.

Jansen smiled apprehensively.

"That depends," he said raising his eyebrows, "But you little insects do everything in your power to entertain that person whether he's real or not."

Kermit stared at Jansen and laughed.

"Whatever," he concluded.

Kermit quickened his pace to Leslie's home. He thought back to his mother again. He imagined her staring at the television bawling whenever new information came out.

"I understand, Mom," he said to himself, "but it's time for you to stop asking those questions. Maybe you should just ask yourself who I am. Maybe then you could believe in me and trust that Jansen is real."

Kermit sighed. "It's time for you to stop performing. I'll bet a lot of people think they're at center stage right now anyway. Too many."

Coincidentally or not, millions of families and friends where asking why it had happened. Why was Chicago gone? Why them? Why us? Even the ones who had managed to barely escape by unknowingly driving away at the last minute or by catching an early plane or by some freak occurrence wondered why? Why was I saved? They asked.

And it wasn't necessarily the wrong way to be. After all, it was practically the human nature of a tragedy to provide one thing and one thing alone:

Entertainment.


	15. The Truth

When Kermit arrived, he was shocked to find each of his friends gathered at the steps of Leslie's home. All three of them—Aisa, Ijames, and Gus—wore expressions of concern on their faces. They looked like they had been in conversation, but they fell silent when Kermit came into clear view. They each stood.

"Kermit…" Aisa said carefully.

"What happened, you guys? Where are Leslie's parents?" Kermit asked.

"You just missed them," Gus said. "They drove off to Chicago. They said they called Leslie over and over again, but they couldn't get an answer. We all came over one by one to this house after we saw what happened on the news. Aisa got here first, then me, and Ijames came up just before they left."

"They drove to Chicago?!"

"Yeah," Ijames jumped in, "all airplanes have been grounded for a twenty-four hour period, and nothing is traveling anywhere near Chicago at the moment. Driving is really the only way. I can't blame them… It's seems reckless, but what would you expect a parent to do when their only child might be in danger?"

"Kermit…!" Aisa yelled with some old tears still irritating her eyes, "Where have you been?! What took you so long to get here?!"

Kermit looked at each of their faces. He didn't know what to say. He was unprepared for the thoughts that had been brewing in Aisa'a mind for the past few hours. She didn't know what to think about Chicago or anything else. All she knew was that Kermit had had an idea that something might happen to Leslie. He was the only thing tangible about any of it.

"Aisa…" Gus said placing a hand on her arm, "it's not his fault. He didn't really know anything about—"

"Yes he did!" Aisa said slapping Gus' hand away. "I just told you what Leslie was talking to me about before she left. Kermit knew something was going to happen! He knew it!"

Ijames walked over in-between Aisa and Kermit. Her rising voice was filling with notes of anger. She looked as if she was ready to attack him at any instant. Gus had the same inkling, and he took a place beside Ijames facing Aisa.

Aisa took a step closer to Kermit and closer to the wall that Ijames and Gus had created. "How did you know?! Why didn't you try harder to stop her?!" Even Aisa could sense that she was being unreasonable, but she had to get it off of her chest. "How Kermit?! How?!!"

"Aisa!" Gus yelled, "Shut up, you idiot!! Do you think Kermit caused this to happen?! What are you thinking?!"

"Gus, just stop! Stop! This has nothing to do you or Ijames! I just want to know the truth!! Kermit has some answers to give!! You know that!"

"I don't know anything!" Gus said walking up to Aisa. He grabbed her by the shoulders and stared widely into her face. He began again softly. "I don't know a damn thing… No one does. Look around you… The only people here are friends. Don't blame Kermit for something he didn't do. You said yourself that Leslie told you that he tried to stop her. You said that yourself! What more could he do if she really wanted to go?"

Aisa was beginning to calm down. As much as she did not want to admit it, Gus' reasoning was on point. She fell roughly to the ground sobbing. Gus came to her side and put an arm around her back. Ijames stood watching the scene unfold before his eyes.

Leslie was gone. Slowly, they were all coming to believe it.

Suddenly, Kermit dropped down directly onto his knees in front of Aisa. Her teary stare drifted up to his face. The anger in her eyes had left. Only sadness remained.

"I still don't know what happened, Aisa," Kermit said. "Just a few minutes ago my mother came into my room and said that Chicago was on the news. I wasn't watching it all day because I was so worried… As soon as she told me, I didn't bother waiting around to find out—I came straight here." Tears were beginning to well in Kermit's eyes too. "I tried to stop her. I swear I did. I just had this—" Kermit was about to mention Jansen, but he caught himself. "I had this terrible feeling… I can't explain it. But Leslie said that she didn't care. She said that Chicago was where she _had_ to be. She told me that nothing would happen to her…"

Teardrops fell to the ground.

"She told me that—" Kermit said, "She told me that nothing would happen because she wasn't finished. She said that she had more to do, and she wouldn't leave if she had more to do." Kermit put his hands to his forehead. "Aisa..." he said shaking his head, "was she lying…? Is it possible that she was lying…?"

Aisa stared at Kermit with her mouth agape. She placed her hands down on the ground over Kermit's tears. She moved her face closer. "Did she say that, Kermit?" she asked, "Is that really what she said?"

Kermit mustered a nod through his tears.

Both Ijames and Gus were bystanders to what was happening.

Aisa slowly removed Gus' arm from her back and squeezed it softly in thanks against his side. She climbed to her feet and stared ahead at nothing. She imagined Leslie's face.

"Then she wasn't lying," she said. And then she started to walk away.

"Wait, Aisa!" Gus said getting to his own feet. "Where are you going?"

"I just remembered something that she told me," Aisa said. "I need to go by myself… I'd like to see you guys again tomorrow." From some unknown place, she managed a small smile. "Be sure to stop by my house, you guys."

With that, the ball of yarn ran into the ebbing night.


End file.
